


Hailing Frequencies Closed

by Melospiza_melodia



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Character Death, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-28 20:57:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20785001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melospiza_melodia/pseuds/Melospiza_melodia
Summary: A fan tribute to Aron Eisenberg, as told through the eyes of the Sisko family.





	Hailing Frequencies Closed

_ Captain Nog died in the line of duty. _

Jake Sisko read over the words again, hoping to find them different. He’s an editor now, he can shape texts like wet clay. He’s a writer now, he can make reality warp on a dime, generate galaxies from voids, convert inspiration to fantasy like a plant converting sunlight—like breathing. But the words remained, shaking now, dancing.

_ Captain Nog died in the line of duty. _

He’d read the same report 5 times in the last 3 days. He’s had writer’s block before, but not reader’s block—just digesting the words again and again and always spitting them back up, sour and whole and biting, writhing. Each time new. Each time new. Each time _ he knew _ he’d close his eyes and see that afterimage—the U.S.S. Primadora gasping outward like a flower in the vacuum of space. Warp core breach. Evacuation. Last stand of engineering crew. And Nog—in the center of it all, ever the hands-on captain, dismissing the last crewmembers and taking the helm himself, guiding it away from the fleeing shuttles.

They’d beamed him onto a shuttle after. 

Jake had seen war. He’d written the seminal novels on it. He’d seen skulls gleaming out of phaser-skinned faces, legs splitting open like overripe fruit, a doctor’s hand wielding a scalpel like a bat'leth to cut away infected tissue. He’d dreamed worse. But somehow, his imagination couldn’t conceive that one word: after. It refused to see the body.

Next week was the funeral. He’d have to see the body then. Purchase some of it, in fact.

Setting the padd aside, Jake went to bed. In his head, Nog grinned. _ “I can’t believe it. The intrepid author finally writes himself a sleep schedule.” _

A ghost in his mind laughed back _ “Can’t write dreams if you never have ‘em.” _

_ “Maybe I’ll see you in the morning then. It’ll be a nice change to have company on my workout.” _

_ “Don’t count on it.” _

  


There were benefits to being timeless, to befriending the omniscient. This wasn’t one of them.

To Ben Sisko, Time lay stretched out in languid tidepools. Each day glimmered wet and fresh inside a rocky shoal of hard-packed Infinite, and he could reach in, pull out a Second writhing and minute as a starfish, fleshy and fragmented as a star. Too long outside the Pools, and it shriveled, leaving calcified Space and a fossil fragile even to breathe upon. That was why even while Timeless he could visit each Moment only once, hold that Second like a baby or a breath only once, be a human swimming in the stream only once. That was why even now Ben felt fallible. Why _ especially now _Ben felt fallible. Fragile. Human. Out of his element, and drying out quick.

This Moment he had already stepped in. He had had no choice—disaster on Bajor, planet-wide Armageddon looming, only the Emissary could help, etc. It rankled, but it had to be done. He had known no one planet-side at that Moment and shared none of their blood, but nevertheless these were _ his _ people. They had given him life again after Jennifer. He owed them. He owed them the Time that they had taught him to savor again.

Nevertheless, he regretted muddying that Moment now. Now, when he could finally See.

Sisko leaned into the pool, eager not to touch but anxious to see again. It was a kind of torture, dancing these images behind his eyes. He was no Prophet, nor even a prophet...but he needed this vision. Again, again. A drowning man drinking in the water. Again, again. A hacking of the scar tissue, itching the pain out until it sublimated into air. Again, again.

Jake’s face wavered in the pool—older, wrinkled by ripples and rippled by wrinkles. About 60, if Sisko could judge. Yet still somehow a son missing his father. Somehow always still, no matter how often Sisko Looked, no matter how often Sisko Returned, always a son missing his father.

And he had collapsed into the arms—no, had swept off the ground the shrunken forms of the Grand Negus and his wife. Rom and Leeta. Two parents missing their son. The three held each other, losses echoing between their frames. Magnifying. Crying like a grand piano cracked open in a silent auditorium. Same found same, and pulsed as they reached out towards each other, defying magnetism, screaming blank entropy until it fell limp and dead from their lips. 

Sisko watched on. Watched the casket be prepared—empty, he knew, but for a Starfleet uniform and comm badge. Watched his son fiddle with a brick of gold-pressed latinum like a talisman, warming it until it breathed its own life—and drop it into a bidding bowl. The price of a single, vacuum-dessicated slice of a departed friend. One of many prices his son was paying. One of many he had to pay alone.

Sisko pressed his forehead into the stone and cried. His tears held no Moments, but he swore he saw two boys dangling their legs over the Promenade, laughing over their jumja sticks. And he swore Nog grinned and pointed at a Starfleet uniform—a Ferengi youth staking his claim and striking latinum. Swore that he saw his past self watching the boys, pride glowing wide in his eyes like a wormhole. Swore that he looked up, their eyes locking through Time, and his past self smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> RIP Aron Eisenberg. We'll be seeing you.


End file.
